


Help From Unexpected Places.

by theatergirl06



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Enjoy:), Gen, Should be a fun little experiment!, an unusual pairing!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24907693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatergirl06/pseuds/theatergirl06
Summary: After an unfortunate stage door run-in, one queen finds her mind traveling a little further than normal one Sunday night.
Relationships: Catherine of Aragon & Anne of Cleves
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	Help From Unexpected Places.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Pain, stabbing, physical restraint and mild violence.

It was Sunday night, and Catherine found herself alone in the corner of the pub. This in itself wasn’t unusual, but tonight seemed just a little different. She felt...out of it, somehow. Her brain kept floating away as she watched the summer rain patter against the windows. It was almost as though she was asleep, except she wasn’t.

She supposed it was because of her encounter at the stage door earlier that same night. It had been an ordinary stagedoor experience until a man had come up to her, pinned her against the wall, and started yelling at her. Most of the crowd hadn’t seen her come out, so they hadn’t noticed, and that had only made her feel worse as he screamed at her, calling her worthless, unlovable, a bitch, and saying she deserved to die.

She supposed it hadn’t been the words themselves that had dug into her brain, though perhaps it was, but rather, the sensation of being pinned to the wall, of being helpless.

She was no stranger to it. Neither was Kat, and neither was Cathy. 

It usually meant pain was coming, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Of course it hadn’t meant that this time. It had only been a minute or so before they were spotted by a furious and terrified Anne, and the man had been yelled at (quite forcefully), and removed from the theatre. The entire crowd at the stage door had seen it, which was embarrassing, but now, sitting and staring at the rain on the window, it wasn’t the image of the crowd that was still stuck in her mind.

It was that feeling of being pinned to the wall. Of being helpless. Of losing control of everything, even your own body, while someone told you everything that was wrong with you.

She was used to creepers. They all were. When you were a reincarnated queen from the 1500s, hell, even when you were just a normal West End actor, you had to be. 

But some of them got under her skin. And this one was one of them.

Before she could get  _ too  _ sucked into her thoughts, she was brought back to reality by a thump across from her. Looking over, she saw that Kat had slid into the other side of the booth. Somehow she’d managed to get her hands on two milkshakes, despite the fact that Catherine was 99% sure the pub didn’t even serve them. She knew the fifth queen had a distaste for alcohol, but she usually ordered soda.

Grinning, Kat slid one of the milkshakes across the table, and Catherine absentmindedly took a sip from it, not even remembering to thank her.

“Distracted, huh?”

Catherine sighed. “Yeah, how can you tell?”

Kat smiled in that sweet, sympathetic, slightly pitying way she did when someone asked her a stupid question. “Catherine, I hate to break this to you but...it’s  _ really  _ easy to tell when you’re distracted.”

Catherine laughed. “That obvious, am I?”

“Only about this!”

Catherine took another sip of the milkshake. “Fair enough.” She paused. “How’d you get this thing?”

Kat smiled. “The bartender...you know, my friend Abby?”

“Yeah. You’re always talking to her whenever Anne’s had too many drinks and starts doing old 90s dances.”

“Right, that’s her. Anyway, she knows I don’t like alcohol and she had some extra ice cream in the freezer downstairs. She was saving it for later tonight, but I told her about that creep at the theatre and she offered it to you.” 

“That’s kind of her.”

In reality, Catherine didn’t want anyone’s pity milkshakes. It just meant she was even more helpless, needed even more support from everyone else in order to survive. It meant the exact opposite of what she wanted out of this second life.

But it was free ice cream. So she sipped it anyway.

Kat cocked her head. “Are you all right? I know those creepers have a way of getting under my skin.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m used to them.”

Kat twirled her ponytail uncomfortably. “Just because you get used to it doesn’t make it right.”

Catherine got the sense she was talking about more than just the creeper from tonight.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“I know. I’m not mad.” Catherine could tell from the look in her eyes that the youngest queen was indeed telling the truth. “I’m just reminding you. If I’ve learned anything from this life, it’s that it’s okay to not be okay.” She slid her hand across the table and squeezed Catherine on the wrist. “Go home. Watch a movie, eat some popcorn, talk to someone. Don’t put up walls. It doesn’t stop stuff like this from happening.”

Why did she have to be so  _ right _ ? It was infuriating.

Catherine turned her head towards the rain-spattered glass to avoid looking the pink-haired queen in the eye. “I’m really fine, Kat. These guys can’t hurt us. There’s nothing special about them.”    
Kat nodded. Catherine could see her reflection in the window. “I know that, Catherine, and you know that in your head. But do you  _ really  _ feel that way? With your whole heart.”

The beheaded queen left the booth before she could hear the Spanish queen’s answer. But Catherine answered her anyway. 

“I don’t know.”

It seemed like only seconds before she felt another motion in the booth, this time directly next to her. She turned and found Cathy Parr sitting there, looking slightly frazzled and very exhausted.

“What happened to  _ you _ ?”

Cathy gave her godmother a sheepish grin. “I tried dancing, since we do it in the show. I ended up slung over Anne’s shoulder.”

“When your girlfriend is twice your height, those sorts of things tend to happen.”

“First of all, she is not twice my height. Second of all, how would you know? You’re the tallest out of all of us.”

“I know the theory of having a girlfriend who’s taller than you.”

“Ah. Just like I know the theory of being the tall one.”

Catherine sipped her milkshake. The glass was nearly empty now. “You’re not  _ that  _ short.”

“No. Anne’s just around eight feet tall.”

“You do realize Anne is an inch and a half shorter than I am, right?”

“Somehow, everyone seems like the tallest person in the room when you’re slung over their shoulders.”

“Fair enough.”

But Catherine was not feeling “fair enough.” Her mind had travelled to another time, where she had indeed been the one slung over his shoulders.   
The first time had been in celebration, the second in punishment. Neither had been pretty, and neither were moments she wanted to remember. But of course, the second she decided she didn’t want to remember them, they showed up inside of her head.

Such was the way of life, as Cathy would say.

“Catherine!” Cathy’s sharp voice snapped the first queen out of her haze of complicated thoughts.

“So sorry, what was that?”

Cathy cocked her head, clearly catching on to the fact that something was wrong. “I was just asking what you were thinking about. Anything interesting?”

Sighing, Catherine rested her head on her arms, suddenly feeling very, very tired. “No, nothing you’d care about.”   
She didn’t see Cathy leave the booth because her eyes were closed. But she knew when the author had gone.

She’d only meant to shut her eyes for a minute, but the next thing she knew, she was back in the past.

_ She’d failed again. She’d almost succeeded, but then she’d failed. Somewhere, deep down inside of her, there was a part of her heart that knew she wasn’t really at fault, but that didn’t stop the guilt from creeping in as he screamed and tore at the air and threw her around like a human rag doll. Maybe not even a human. _

_ He used to be so different. Everything used to be different. _

“Oi, Aragon! Care to challenge the champion?” Anne was standing in the middle of a dance floor, a golden champagne glass in her hand. Catherine had seen that glass before. It was the unofficial trophy for all the unofficial dance competitions held at this pub. Anne had kept possession of the glass for the past nine months. Anna liked to joke that it was essentially Anne’s baby, and given the way the French queen treated the thing, Catherine couldn’t exactly fault her logic.

She would normally love to challenge the green-clad queen at dancing and beat her at her own game. It was exactly the sort of friendly competition she thrived on.

But not tonight. Tonight, her brain was still in the past.

She managed to shake her head “no” just once before she found herself back in the palace, this time watching Anne dance. 

_ She wasn’t mesmerizing when she danced like Anna, or beautiful and radiating light like Kat, she was just...stunning in a dark, dangerous sort of way. She was young, new, fresh, everything Catherine had somehow found she couldn’t be. _

_ She was the Spanish queen’s end. She knew it, Catherine knew it, Henry knew it. _

_ Everyone knew it. _

“Hey, Catherine, love, you alright?”

Catherine raised her head to find her brow covered in cold sweat and a very concerned Jane staring down at her.

What was she supposed to tell her? That a random creepy guy had unlocked the back door of her brain and sent the tidal wave of her past rushing into her thoughts? How was she supposed to explain that, especially to someone who’d suffered a different kind of pain, one Catherine had trouble understanding as it was. She couldn’t expect her best friend to take on her pain if the trade wasn’t going to go both ways. 

Everyone was so complicated now, all tangled up in the past, and in her heart. Was anything even easy anymore?

Was one easy thing too much to ask?

Blinking, she realized Jane was still staring at her. 

“I’m fine.”

And then, at last, the gates broke, and her mind was lost to the tidal wave completely. 

_ She was pinned against the wall after a bad day and a worse game of cards. She still wasn’t done bleeding from the last time, but she hadn’t seen him coming, and so she hadn’t had time to run. Now she was helpless as the knife pierced her skin, unable to move or scream or even fight the pain. At this point, there was no use in doing anything but let it take over.  _

“Catherine.”   
The voice she heard wasn’t worried. Quite the opposite, it sounded entirely calm, almost soothing. 

She opened her eyes to find herself sitting on the steps next to Anna.

“What are you doing here?” Her bluntness only came out of her mental haze.

Anna laughed sharply. “I came to talk to you. I want to help.”   
“I’m fine.”

“You keep blacking out. You’re not fine.”

“You’re one to talk when it comes to hiding injuries. What about that time you broke your ankle and didn’t tell anyone until it looked like a cantaloupe?”

“Nice try. This isn't about me.”

Catherine sighed. The other divorced queen was a woman that she didn’t know very well, but she knew that she was stubborn. There was no point in saying anything other than the truth. 

“That creeper got into my head.”

Anna nodded. She didn’t seem to be flustered, which Catherine appreciated. She loved the queens, but everything felt like such a big deal. That was how it had felt her whole life.

To just be around someone where things weren’t always  _ so  _ important felt...liberating. 

“It wasn’t even what he said. It was that feeling. Being pinned to the wall. Losing control of your own body. Being completely helpless to stop the coming pain. It’s just...it’s a feeling I’d rather forget, okay?”

Anna cocked her head. “We can’t forget, Catherine. I’ve tried, we all have, and it just makes everything worse.”

“I know that, but…”

“That doesn’t stop you from doing it.”

“Right.”

There was a pause.

Anna sighed. “But here’s the thing. If we let everything drag us back to the past, then we’re living then instead of now.”

“It’s not my fault I keep going back there.”   
“No. But did you try focusing on the things you like in the present?”

Catherine’s face reddened. “No.”

Anna laughed. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Catherine. You’re just such an idiot sometimes.”

“Like you’re better.”

Laughing, Anna turned to go, but Catherine surprised even herself by standing and grabbing the German queen’s shoulder.

“Wait. Anna, I...please don’t leave me alone.” She could feel the past at the corners of her mind. “I can’t do that. Not yet.”   
Anne nodded and sat back down. “All right then.”

And so she stayed.


End file.
